The Netflix Basic tier – which the company had previously attempted to hide – has now been withdrawn in both the US and UK, following the same move in Canada last month.
Removing the package will now force anyone wanting to dump the ads to pay more than twice as much for the Standard plan …
Netflix tiers
Netflix used to offer a choice of four tiers:
- Standard with Ads (previously called Basic with Ads) – 1080p, 2 devices
- Basic – 720p, 1 device
- Standard – 1080p, 2 devices
- Premium – 4K, 6 devices, 2 users at another address
The Basic tier has now been removed as an option for new subscribers, as well as for anyone wanting to switch to it from another tier. Existing Netflix Basic subscribers can continue using the plan, for now at least.
Netflix Basic previously hidden, now gone
The company had already strongly discouraged people from signing up to Netflix Basic, by hiding it from the packages shown by default. As Cordbusters reports, a change was made back in January to only show the Basic with Ads, Standard, and Premier tiers. You had to delve into a link in the small-print to discover that a fourth option – Netflix Basic – was also available.
It was removed altogether in Canada last month, and the same is now true in the US and UK.
A steep price increase if you don’t like ads
Top comment by Blorft
I'll admit that I've been caught up in the FOMO of "I need to have every streaming service so that I can watch all the hit shows and feel culturally well-informed and able to socialize by talking about those shows" in the past, but lately...there's just too much. Too many services, too many premiere shows, to much stuff and not enough time. And this might just be a personal taste thing, but so many modern TV shows (especially Disney and HBO) feel like they're not really "self-contained-episode shows" so much as "segmented really long movies" with overly-convoluted plots to fill the time.
I dropped Hulu / Prime Video / Apple TV+ recently, I'm going to drop Netflix in the near future, and I'll just stick with HBO (for movies) / Disney+ (for Star Wars) / Paramount+ (for Star Trek) going forward. Anything else can just pass me by, and if I get bored...I'll read a book.
That effectively amounts to a steep price increase if you’re on the Basic with Ads tier and want to get rid of the ad breaks. In the UK, for example, you could upgrade to Basic for an extra £2/month – from £4.99 to £6.99. Now, you’ll have to switch instead to Standard at £10.99, more than doubling your subscription.
9to5Mac’s Take
It’s clear that with this move, and the clampdown on password sharing, that Netflix is trying to do everything it can to increase subscriber numbers and boost revenues. But in the increasingly-competitive video streaming space, it’s playing a risky game.
Both this and the password move might boost revenue, but they could equally well result in people dumping Netflix altogether (something I’ve recently done, simply because I realized I hadn’t watched anything on it for months).
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